The final batch of movies watched in 2013:

223. (530.) Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
Terrific Otto Preminger directed psychological suspense movie with a weird tinge of incest. Hitchcock quality. Highly recommended.

224. (531.) Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
The first Myrna Loy/William Powell movie, and the movie that John Dillinger had just watched before Federal Agents gunned him down. It felt a little cliche for my taste, but it's always hard to tell how much of that cliche comes from others who have copycatted this. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

225. (532.) Grand Central Murder (1942)
A wacky whodunnit, this film would have served as a fine undercard with a bigger production. Lots of comedy for a relatively straightforward murder mystery.

226. (533.) The Roaring Twenties (1939)
This movie title gives us the phrase we now associate with the decade of bootleggers. It's fun to see Bogart play a bad guy.

227. (534.) Miami Vice (2006)
Not as bad as I'd been lead to believe. This film has style and artificial pathos to spare, but it could have used an injection of humanity. Everyone is so serious! (And Colin Farrell's southern accent...? No. Just no.)

228. (535.) Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)
A Hitchcock comedy that is a little heavy on the suggestive and innuendo for the period That's not a knock, it's just a fact. Maybe I'm too prudish.

229. (536.) Frozen (2013)
Friend Cooper called and asked me to go to the movie, and this is what he chose. The film is front-loaded with exposition, mostly delivered in song. Once the singing slows down, the movie takes off, and I enjoyed myself. (I'm a sucker for Kristen Bell.)

230. (537.) Taking Woodstock (2009)
I don't know how much of this comedy was factual, but I can't imagine that it was too much. Best in Show aside, Eugene Levy so rarely appears in real documentaries.

That's 230 new-to-me movies in 2013, a vast majority of which were comedies (68). The actor I saw the most was Tom Conway, the actress, Myrna Loy (for the second year in a row). Alfred Hitchcock was by far the director I saw most often: 10 different movies! (I thought I had seen a lot of Hitchcock's movies before now. The man was prolific.) The writer's work most watched was Preston Sturges, who I came to sincerely appreciate. And, of course, the most common production studio was MGM. (Thank you, Turner Classic Movies!)

So what'll be playing in 2014?

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To be continued...

 

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